Faculty News

On October 29th, Kristin Douglas presented a convocation talk entitled, "How different are we? Genetics and the Individual" at Illinois College in Jacksonville, IL . The presentation served as an introduction to the science of genetics for non-scientists and answered questions such as: What is DNA? How does it carry information in a cell? What are proteins? What are alleles? After covering the basics, our current understanding of genetic diversity between individuals was discussed. The talk was funded by the Illinois Humanities Council Road Scholars program. For more information on the Illinois Humanities Council Road Scholars Speakers Bureau, please click here.

Mariano Magalhaes and Dara Wegman-Geedey were accepted as participants in the Public Health and Liberal Education Faculty Development Workshop, the first joint educational effort between the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and the Association for Prevention Teaching and Research (APTR), held in Washington, DC during July 2007. Participation was limited to faculty from 23 colleges and universities as all expenses were covered by funding from the CDC(P). Magalhaes' and Wegman-Geedey's proposal highlighted the Augustana AGES program and the ways in which a public health/global health learning community would fit the needs of the APTR/AAC&U program while simultaneously fulfilling our general education goals. They plan to offer their LC for the first time in Spring 2009.

Dara Wegman-Geedey served as a reviewer for the American Society for Microbiology's Microbe Curriculum Library, an on-line collection of exercises and pedagogy reviews, during March and July 2007. In early November 2007 she also served as a reviewer for articles submitted to the ASM's Journal of Microbiology and Biology Education, a peer-reviewed SoTL publication.

Congratulations to Ritva Williams, who will be ordained as a minister of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America on December 15, 2007. Ritva has also received a Letter of Call to serve as Associate Pastor at Zion Lutheran Church (ELCA) in Davenport, Iowa.